So, it’s maple syrup season… or at least the calendar will tell you that. Someone needs to tell mother nature. While its true that we have been enjoying a rather unseasonably warm winter, followed by a blast of cold weather the past week, overall, it has been either too warm or too cold for the sap to run. The conditions have to be just right for optimum sap flow. That means freezing at night, and above freezing during the day. Here in upstate New York, those conditions usually occur at the end of January, all of February, and the first half of March. But not this year…. which has been kind of a blessing in disguise, because to be perfectly honest, we aren’t ready. We have been on the nonstop express farm work train since we bought the place in August. There are things we have had to get done, when we had time to do them, regardless of the weather. For example, last weekend we needed to split wood on Saturday. If you recall, there was an extreme weather advisory for last weekend. The wind chill was -24 degrees, and people were advised to not be outside for any length of time. We bundled up, and I mean BUNDLED up, and out we went. We wore full face masks and ski goggles to protect our eyes from the wind. My goggles kept collecting condensation that would freeze on the inside of them. I had to keep lifting up my goggles to scrape the ice off so I could see what we were doing. At one point, I looked at Egidio who had taken his goggles off and all of his eye lashes were frozen. He wasn’t happy when I forced him to put the goggles back on. We spent the entire day splitting and stacking wood. On Sunday, with a high of 6 degrees we ventured back out to run maple lines. We dragged our butts up and down our mountain all day long. Clothing that keeps you warm in that kind of weather weighs about 50 pounds… so we schlepped up and down with our tools and tubing.. It was exhausting!! AND…. we spent the previous day splitting and stacking wood. I could barely drag my body out of bed come Monday morning. I think it’s fair to say that we are slowly earning the title “FARMER”.

Most people know that pure maple syrup comes from a maple tree. What you may not know is that it takes about 50 gallons of maple sap to be boiled down into one gallon of maple syrup. But first, you have to get the sap. Last year, long before Egidio and I bought the farm, we decided to try our hand at making maple syrup. His mother tapped trees in their yard when he was a kid so he was somewhat familiar with the process. Although techniques had changed significantly. Metal buckets hanging from trees are a thing of the past for several reasons.  First, it’s a lot of work to go from tree to tree dumping buckets of sap into a larger bucket, to be carted off to be boiled down into syrup. Second, metal buckets rust. That’s just not good. Last year we started with a few sap bags. They were okay initially, then they started to blow off the trees or over flow and break. We then evolved to tubes running from the taps into 5 gallon buckets on the ground. We even went as far as having two taps in a single tree that ran into one bucket. That was sweet! I must admit, it was actually exciting to pull into the driveway and see where the sap lines were in the buckets. It did not take long for us to be completely addicted to making syrup. I still remember that first batch of pancakes with our own syrup. It was a little runny… but it was ours…. WE made it!! …..So what happens when you find something you love to do?? Something you enjoy making together?? You want to make more of it! When we started to seriously look at our farm, one of the first things we noticed was the maple trees.  We would make a mental count when we walked the property. Most of our farm is wooded land, with lots of maple trees that have never been taped. We decided if we were going to do this farm thing… we had to do it right. Egidio has been spending his late evenings at his house in the shop welding together an evaporator. Last year we used an old wood stove that Egidio cut the top off of and placed a small stainless steel pan into the opening. That was fine for the 25 taps we had in his yard. This year on the farm, that just won’t do.

So today we will spend the day getting the evaporator in place, trying out our RO (reverse osmosis) machine and boiling down the sap we have collected. I have been working on different recipes for maple popcorn and maple granola, a few tweaks are still needed but it’s getting there. Egido and I keep reminding each other.. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey….and  I can honestly say, there is no one on this planet that I would rather be on this journey with, than him.